if senator mccain and senator graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. >> reporter: a very strong defense. of course, it was the intelligence community that briefed susan rice before she went out on all the sunday shows saying this might have started because of protests, george. >> she was working off cia talking points. martha, thank you very much. >>> that question to president obama about ambassador rice came from jonathan karl, who joined in on the press conference. and joins us now with more. questions on all of the big issues. but much of the focus on that looming fiscal cliff january 1st. >> reporter: that's right, george. the president will meet with congressional leaders tomorrow. he used that press conference to lay out very bright lines on where he stands on taxes and the fiscal cliff. holding his first news conference since winning re-election, the president took a hard line on his bottom line. there will be no budget deal without raising taxes on the wealthy. >> when it comes to the top 2%, what i'm not going to do is to extend further a tax c